


By fire and friendship

by SolarisRasa



Series: Sol's Malec Whumptober 2020 [17]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Battlefield, Lost in Time, M/M, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27218203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolarisRasa/pseuds/SolarisRasa
Summary: No 20. TOTO, I HAVE A FEELING WE’RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORELost | Field Medicine | MedievalAlec has been stuck in a medieval war camp for months. He shares a little of the future he is hoping to return to with his new friends and gets a little glimmer of hope in return.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: Sol's Malec Whumptober 2020 [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953454
Comments: 8
Kudos: 67





	By fire and friendship

**Author's Note:**

> What the fuck is this. What the fuck am I doing.

Of all the things Alec has taken for granted in life he really did not expect things like rubber soled boots to make the list. The wooden soles of his current pair are hell on his feet after so many days and Alec is certain that if he takes them off the smell might actually knock him out. 

He’s focused on that so he doesn’t have to focus on the field around him. What was a wide swath of some green, likely underground, crop is trampled and muddied. The blood that soaks the soil where the worst of the fighting happened stains the leather of softer shoes rust brown. 

Alec is knelt at one edge of the reeking mess of bodies, tying his boot laces more securely in place. The edge of his sword belt digs into his skin uncomfortably where it sits under his leather jerkin and he curses himself for not moving it when he stripped out of his armor. His thigh holster is packed carefully with the gear that came with him months ago, its design out of place with its visible zippers.

When he finishes with his boots he can no longer ignore the task laid out before him. Navarre is waiting for him, already wading through corpses in search of his own white tipped arrows. He is one of the few who have heard Alec’s secret and though he doesn’t seem to truly believe him he has never made fun or shied away from the nights when Alec  _ needs  _ to mention the people he loves.

Alec begins searching for his red-fletched arrows among the bodies, recovering as many of them as he can. There are more wooden among them now, his adamas ones lost in the course of so many battles. He hopes he will be able to ask Izzy to replenish them, someday.

Navarre holds something out to him, his gloved palm turned down to drop it into Alec’s own bare hand. A silver ring glitters where Navarre has wiped the filth off of it and Alec has to swallow hard.

His wedding ring, taken from him weeks ago when he was briefly captured.

Navarre watches him carefully as he drops his arrows and tugs his tunic sleeve down to rub the ring clean. He cannot, will not, stop himself from pressing a kiss to the metal before he slides it back on his hand.

“Aye. It matched your description.”

Alec nods, blinking liquid out of his eyes, “Thank you.”

Navarre tips his head, “Those letters, ‘round the inside?”

Alec has spent enough time with the man to know what it is he’s asking and here, in the breeze and the blood and the death he doesn’t want to answer, so he just shakes his head. Navarre gives him a lingering stare, but lets it go.

They return to their search.

-

Late that evening, bedded down in between the trees at the edge of the camp, a small fire crackling between them, Alec watches the light bounce of his ring.

Navarre and Phillipa, his remaining friends, are talking quietly over the last of their supper. The space to Alec’s right is empty after Peter fell to the slow death of a noblemans sword to his gut. Alec tries not to remember finding him, still choking on blood, as he retrieved his arrows, he tries not to remember the manic fear that gripped him. He could die here, never see home, never see his family again.

Phillipa, her voice soft and high here in the dark with them, where she is not afraid of discovery or of the hungers a man may have, interrupts his thoughts.

“Navarre spoke of letters in your ring, a token from your love?”

For all that Alec has told them of his life, the future where he is meant to be, he has never told them about Magnus. He knows that Phillipa has guessed where his interests lay, that Navarre holds no interest in any gender, nor in the entanglements of romance, but it is wholly different to tell them. He hesitates, watching them both across the fire.

He knows their secrets too, he has kept Phillipa safe when she’s hurt, tended to her wounds so no other may realize what is beneath her armor. He has sat with Navarre and listened to him speak of a fallen house, a great stain on the honor of his line, his breaking with the family and understood that he was meant to be on one of the white horses that commanded men to die, always parading at the back of the fighting.

He owes them this truth, though he knows they cannot grasp everything about him, this they can understand. 

“It’s my wedding ring.”

Navarre straightens some and Phillipa’s eyes glimmer, interested but sad, “You’ve a wife?” 

Alec laughs a little, “A husband. Magnus. We have two sons and a cat.”

“You must miss them.” Phillipa says and Alec closes his eyes as he nods, throat tight.

“They are in the future? Away from this bloody war?” Navarre’s gruff voice asks.

“Yes. Magnus and I, we fought in a different sort of war and no doubt we will again, but it is safer for our children there. I-I do not know if I will see them again.” It’s the fear that Alec doesn’t want to voice, but laying in the firelight between one battlefield and the next he must.

“You will.” Navarre says, certainty in the lines of his face as he prods at their fire, “They exist beyond this-” he gestures with his bare hand, “-madness. You are a man of quality, your husband will look for you.”

Alec smiles, “He will. He’s probably driving my family insane with his theories by now. He’s a gifted warlock-” Alec cuts himself off but it’s too late.

“A warlock? He has magic?” Phillipa looks excited, “Are the words in your ring a spell?”

“No. No. It’s his,” Alec twists the band off, holding it out for her to see the engraving clearer, “It’s his mothertongue. It just says ‘I love you’ and that’s the symbol for infinity, forever.”

“ ‘Just’ says he loves you.” Navarre rolls his eyes at Phillipa’s chiding tone, “Forever. Unknowable but sweet.”

Alec doesn’t think he should say that Magnus is immortal. He puts the ring back on, noting that Navarre is staring at it, frowning.

“Does he wear one?”

Alec blinks at the question, “Yes?”

“It matches, the flames?”

“Yes.”

Navarre jolts to his feet, “I’ve seen it. There’s a tapestry in my father’s house of a day that a great darkness came. A man with a ring of flame and fire at his fingertips who asked strange questions and made demands of my father after he tried to attack the man. I used to stare at it when I was a boy, in my lessons, until the teacher became incensed and taught me everything he knew of the man. He appears in various texts and stories, only ever for a day, across a wide swath of time.”

Alec has sat up, staring at his friend but it is Phillipa who gives voice to the thought coursing through Alec.

“He is looking for you. Across time, he’s searching you out.”

Alec nods once as Navarre settles back down, “I only hope he finds me, before-” Alec looks to Peter’s empty space.

Silence falls between the three of them and the lost feeling in his chest deepens a little.

“We’ll keep you safe.” Phillipa says, flippant, like it’s not a promise. Navarre makes a face, like he thought that was obvious and Alec feels a surge of gratitude toward these two, these companions who have made being adrift bearable.

“Tell us, then, about how you managed a husband.” Navarre says.

“Yes! You are too surly to be charming, did you win him by scowling at him?” Phillipa laughs and Alec groans, flicks a pebble at her ankle.

“If I tell you what I can, will you let me sleep?”

They both make oath-gestures and Alec sighs, giving in and the ache in his heart eases just a little as he shares the breathless beginning with them. 


End file.
